Top 744 Quotes & Sayings by Alexander Pope - Page 10

In death a hero, as in life a friend!

Talk what you will of taste, my friend, you'll find two of a face as soon as of a mind.

Still when the lust of tyrant power succeeds, some Athens perishes, or some Tully bleeds.

A pear-tree planted nigh: 'Twas charg'd with fruit that made a goodly show, And hung with dangling pears was every bough.

Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?

Trace Science, then, with Modesty thy guide, First strip off all her equipage of Pride, Deduct what is but Vanity or Dress, Or Learning's Luxury or idleness, Or tricks, to show the stretch of the human brain Mere curious pleasure or ingenious pain.

The flower's are gone when the Fruits appear to ripen.

There are some solitary wretches who seem to have left the rest of mankind, only, as Eve left Adam, to meet the devil in private.

The dances ended, all the fairy train For pinks and daisies search'd the flow'ry plain.

What bosom beast not in his country's cause?

It is sure the hardest science to forget!

Some are bewildered in the maze of schools, And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools.

Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise. By mountains pil'd on mountains to the skies? Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys, And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.

Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven, And though no science, fairly worth the seven.

And empty heads console with empty sound.

A generous friendship no cold medium knows, Burns with one love, with one resentment glows.

By flatterers besieged And so obliging that he ne'er obliged.

O Love! for Sylvia let me gain the prize, And make my tongue victorious as her eyes.

The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife gives all the strength and color of our life.

Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow: Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.

Alas! the small discredit of a bribe Scarce hurts the lawyer, but undoes the scribe.

Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.

No craving void left aching in the soul.

To the Elysian shades dismiss my soul, where no carnation fades.

Ye gods, annihilate but space and time, And make two lovers happy.

Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, and fills up all the mighty void of sense.

The most positive men are the most credulous, since they most believe themselves, and advise most with their falsest flatterer and worst enemy--their own self-love.

As some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there. These equal syllables alone require, Though oft the ear the open vowels tire While expletives their feeble aid do join, And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.

Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes; And when in act they cease, in prospect rise.

Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend, With whom my muse began, with who shall end.

Hear how the birds, on ev'ry blooming spray, With joyous musick wake the dawning day.

Education forms the common mind.

To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite, who never mentions hell to ears polite.

Where beams of imagination play, the memory's soft figures melt away.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each Seene, and be what they behold: For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage.

Who know but He, whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms, Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind.

Is it, in Heav'n, a crime to love too well? To bear too tender or too firm a heart, To act a lover's or a Roman's part? Is there no bright reversion in the sky For those who greatly think, or bravely die?

What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards? Alas! not all the blood, of all the Howards.

Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood, Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.

Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield; Learn from the beasts the physic of the field; The arts of building from the bee receive; Learn of the mole to plow, the worm to weave.

Search then the ruling passion: This clue, once found, unravels all the rest.

Monuments, like men, submit to fate.

Ask you what provocation I have had? The strong antipathy of good to bad.

A wise physician, skill'd our wounds to heal, is more than armies to the public weal.

If I am right, Thy grace impart Still in the right to stay; If I am wrong, O, teach my heart To find that better way!

Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme, Happy to catch me, just at dinner-time.

Whoe'er he be That tells my faults, I hate him mortally.

The enormous faith of many made for one.

A good-natured man has the whole world to be happy out of.

Never elated while one man's oppress'd; Never dejected while another's blessed.

The light of Heaven restore; Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more.

Be niggards of advice on no pretense; For the worst avarice is that of sense.

What's fame? a fancy'd life in other's breath. A thing beyond us, even before our death.

O happiness! our being's end and aim! Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate'er thy name: That something still which prompts the eternal sigh, For which we bear to live, or dare to die.

Atheists put on false courage and alacrity in the midst of their darkness and apprehensions, like children who, when they fear to go in the dark, will sing for fear.

In lazy apathy let stoics boast, their virtue fix'd: 't is fix'd as in a frost; contracted all, retiring to the breast; but strength of mind is exercise, not rest.

There still remains to mortify a wit The many-headed monster of the pit.

For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crowned.The berries crackle, and the mill turns round ... At once they gratify their scent and taste.And frequent cups prolong the rich repast... Coffee (which makes the politician wise And see through all things with his half-shut eyes).

The scripture in times of disputes is like an open town in times of war, which serves in differently the occasions of both parties.

Of fight or fly, This choice is left ye, to resist or die.